Good afternoon, and welcome to the community and neighborhood services committee meeting of May twenty, twenty twenty-six.

Our committee lays on Natalie Kessler will provide information and instruction for the public to participate in today's meeting.

Natalie.

Thank you, Chair.

All members of the public are able to attend the meetings in person.

This meeting is being televised and live streamed on the city's website, and Council Administration will continue to make arrangements for the public to comment using the Zoom webinar platform.

Members of the public who wish to provide virtual testimony must enter the virtual queue by raising their hand before the virtual queue closes.

The queue will close when the last virtual speaker finishes speaking or five minutes after in person testimony ends, whichever occurs first.

This will allow for better meeting management between the two platforms and ensure the committee is able to manage and conduct city business.

Yes, I will now call the community neighborhood services meeting for today to order.

And I will take the role.

And we are going to have uh policy advisor Emily Pietanasi from the Office of Mayor Talk Gloria.

She's just running a little bit late today.

And then we have Deputy City Attorney Jane Boardman with the Office of the City Attorney.

And we have Lizelle Gloria, committee consultant.

Yay.

And Natalie Kessler, also uh committee liaison.

And so, Natalie, please continue with public comment instructions.

I will now go over how the public can offer their public testimony during today's meeting.

If you're in person, please complete a speaker slip located at the entrance of the committee room and place it in the tray indicated at the front of the room.

Please submit your speaker slip in a timely manner to ensure proper meeting management.

In-person testimony will conclude before virtual testimony begins, and members of the public can join the webinar by computer, tablet, or smartphone by accessing the link listed online in the preamble language of the agenda on the city's webpage.

To join the Zoom webinar by phone, please dial 1669-2545252.

When prompted, the one the please input webinar ID 160429-1678 pound.

This information is also available on the agenda and will appear on the screen during the public comment period for each agenda item.

Please note that if you're watching via City TV Channel 24 or online, there may be a delay.

Please participate via the audio on your phone and meet your TV or computer when it is your turn to speak.

If you wish to speak on a particular item, wait for that item to be called and then raise your hand to speak by tapping the raise your hand icon, or if you're a call-in participant, press star and on your phone.

If you raise your hand during a non-comment period, your hand will be lowered.

Chair.

Thank you so much, Natalie.

Uh a quorum is now present.

And for the public's awareness, uh as well as our committee members.

Just a reminder, we will be hearing items a little bit out of order today.

We will first hear our consent agenda, and that will be followed by item five, which is the item uh on our information agenda.

And after that, we will then continue with items two, three, and four.

So once again, the order today will be item one, five, two, three, and four.

We'll now take up non-agenda public comment.

Council members respect and appreciate the public's input and are fully committed to protecting every participant's free speech rights at council and committee meetings.

Natalie, please proceed with non-agenda public comment.

But within the subject matter jurisdiction of the committee, each speaker will have two minutes.

And Chair, we have not received any speaker slips submitted here in the committee room, so we will move to the virtual queue.

I've started the five-minute timer, and there are four hands currently raised in the queue.

Madison, please unmute and provide your non-agenda public comment or call.

Hi, thank you.

Good afternoon, committee members.

Today my concern is about the continued commercialization of marijuana in our communities.

I want to urge your opposition to AB 2697, which would allow marijuana businesses to operate through drive-through windows, pass out windows, and slide-out trays.

Allowing drive-through marijuana sales would further normalize the use of an intoxicating substance and make it feel no different than picking up fast food or a cup of coffee.

For children and teens who are constantly watching the message adults and businesses send, this is a really bad idea.

When young people see marijuana sold through a drive-thru, it communicates that this is harmless, routine, or part of everyday life.

And there are also serious public safety concerns, of course.

We continue hearing about impaired driving and the need for stronger prevention efforts.

Encouraging people to purchase marijuana without even leaving their vehicles, sends the wrong message at a time when communities are working hard to reduce substance-related harm and promote responsible behavior.

San Diego is already facing significant behavioral health and young youth wellness challenges.

We should be focused on prevention for healthy communities, not expanding high-convenience marijuana sales models that increase commercialization and reduce barriers to use.

And any other policies that deteriorate physical and mental health.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Blair Beekman.

Please unmute and begin.

Hi, Blair Beekman.

Happy afternoon meeting.

Working our regular routines, it actually can be really uh helpful at this time.

It's good reminders of what we do well, and it's nice to be in our good practices.

Uh a reminder, uh, you know, I try to make uh constructive criticisms and ask questions uh during public comment.

Uh, you guys kind of know how I work at this point, and I really mean to work in good intentions.

If I say things a little uncomfortable at this difficult time, you know, I'm trying to watch that and be sensitive, but uh hopefully I we can continue and I can make my observations and ask questions and criticisms as well.

Um with that said, I guess um, you know, I guess some of the main things I wanted to ask about um Tony spoke yesterday of IRA issues, and um I hope I can this can be a time that um we worked as a as a council and a community on IRA issues a few months ago now.

It had a lot of uh questions around it and and council persons themselves really wanted to work on, and they asked community, you know, if there's ways we can update and improve upon these IRA initial IRA asks that they that Blair, we cannot hear you.

We've paused your time.

You know, council themselves wanted to work on it can really be a time that we bring together.

Uh you know, can we work on working groups or some sort of way that uh, you know, uh people from the Muslim community from the Jewish community come together and work on IRA issues together, work on a language that I think can really help uh bridge our community's differences at this time, and yet respect all sides of uh, you know, uh arguments and and questions and work towards uh a community and a democratic process for these IRA questions that I think if we do that, that's good faith efforts, and that's building the community and not creating fear.

And let's hope we can be addressing our all our fears at this time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Becky Rapp.

Please unmute and begin.

Good afternoon.

Um I just wanted to mention that it seems that every item on this agenda highlights a consistent theme.

Our communities are being asked to do more with limited funding to support critical recreation services that families rely on.

At the same time, we're not fully enforcing existing laws that directly impact those these same communities, which could generate significant revenue and improve community safety.

I'm referring specifically to the open sale of products such as illegal flavored tobacco sales, kratom, and intoxicating hemp products being sold in neighborhoods with little oversight.

In fact, these products are often advertised with neon signs in the retailers' windows.

Rather than allowing this activity to continue unchecked, we should prioritize enforcement, confiscating illegal products and imposing per unit enforcement penalties or fees, and enforcement, which could generate significant revenue, potentially tens of millions of dollars that could be redirected directly into parks, recreation programs, and community services.

This is not just a revenue issue, it's also a public health and safety issue.

These products are increasingly accessible in our neighborhoods, and their impacts are being felt by families, youth, and community systems that are already under strain.

If we're serious about equity, prevention and community well-being, then enforcement of existing laws should be part of the solution, and the resulting funds should be reinvested directly into the communities they are intended to protect.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The five-minute timer has concluded.

We have four hands remaining in the virtual queue.

We will take no additional callers after these four.

Phone number ending in 870.

Please unmute and provide your comment.

From Google.

In the city of San Diego, there are an estimated to be over 200 distinct neighborhoods.

And this is for me now.

We need a vision that brings all neighborhoods together as one.

A big thank you to Council President Pro Tem Lee, who very recently said the words about we need a vision for our city.

And I totally agree with him, and he inspired me.

So I want to clarify something I have said during public comments recently.

Dear public, all of you are at the very top of our city's organization chart.

Our city has a structural budget deficit.

Here are my inspired words for all of you.

Ask not what you can do for your excuse me.

Ask not what your city can do for you.

F what you can do for your city.

Now, what I mean meant by that, one big thing you can do for your city is, in my opinion, is to help create a vision for our whole budget and for our whole city, which will include all neighborhoods and all people.

And I think that is going to be a great thing for us.

And we need a great vision and by bringing all of us together as one.

So I I just hope I inspire you to consider this and to join me in this and join uh Council President Pro Tem Lee in what he suggested for us also.

So thank you for listening and consider my suggestion and love to all.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Judy Strang.

Please unmute and begin.

Good afternoon, community and neighborhoods services.

Thank you for this opportunity.

I called in because I wanted to thank you.

Want to thank you for the attention all these many years about our community and neighborhood services.

I attended the Board of Supervisors this morning because I was curious about these dueling county charters.

And I was both confused and upset by the discord I saw there and the way the Board of Supervisors disregarded citizens, and more importantly, about the organization in place that allows citizens to make comments there.

So I was thinking how blessed we've been here in the city to have all of you who run civil meetings and make an opportunity for us to speak, even when it's calling in from our work site, which is my situation.

I just like to remind us of something regarding working with young people and how important what they see is to their choice making.

And something that continues to weigh on my mind is some research we receive that shows that in communities where there are marijuana storefronts, you see higher use.

And with higher use and greater presence, then you see these teen mental health issues.

So I'm hoping that we won't increase the footprint of marijuana businesses in our city.

Thank you for the opportunity to share things of concern.

I never so much appreciated as I did this morning after watching the board of supervisors.

Thank you for all that you do to make our neighborhoods and our community safer, wiser, and healthier.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Tony.

Please unmute and begin.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Hey, how's it going?

How are you doing today, Council?

Um, good afternoon.

I I just wanted to speak.

I wanted to take this non-agenda public comment uh time to speak on something affecting the community and neighborhood services committee.

Um, is uh basically our Fourth Amendment rights, uh, which are now called into question by the fact that uh we have a surveillance technology that is turned all of us into suspects for any and every crime that's committed in the city, um, all for a technology that has less than a point one percent efficiency or efficacy rating.

Um, and I just want to remind everybody on the council a couple of days ago, the mass shooting that happened at the Islamic Center of San Diego, um, that was a failure of Flock Technology to stop those boys who had uh their mother had reported their car had gone missing two hours prior to them arriving to the mosque.

So flock technology, which records automated license plates um all over the city of San Diego, should have caught those boys, should have caught the location of that vehicle, and that technology should have been utilized.

If it was effective, it should have, could have, and would have been utilized to stop that horrific tragedy from taking place.

But it didn't, it didn't, and it's not working.

And for less than a point one percent efficacy rate, this city council is trading away our privacy rights.

And I really resent the cynicism that some members of this council have shown the public who's saying, Oh, well, you don't have privacy rights anyway.

If you cared about your privacy rights, you wouldn't be carrying a phone around with you.

Well, you know what?

The phones that we carry in our pockets are categorically different from automated license plate readers.

The phones in our pockets do not have contracts with the federal government to give our private location and our whereabouts actively wherever we are, to and and to uh store them in a database that then operates uh and questions where our location has been in order to uh predictively police instances that they might suspect in the future.

This does conclude your time.

And our final speaker in the queue is Terry Anskelly.

Please unmute and begin.

Good afternoon, good afternoon, community and neighborhood services, Chair Campbell.

As a parent and community volunteer, I came today to provide my support for any and all citywide park development of new parks and improvement to already existing parks.

With summertime approaching, I have especially noticed how completely our parks are being used for families, sports, games, and church gatherings.

And I think when residents see our city parks receiving upkeep, it gives all of us hope for our neighborhoods that they can be safe and clean.

Although our parks are smoke and vape free, the sidewalks that surround the parks are not, and they can be littered with smoking and vaping debris, and the odor carries out to the children play to their playgrounds in the parks and the small groups having a picnic.

The scientific evidence clearly demonstrates that there is no safe level of exposure to smoke or vapors, which can cause serious health problems in non-smokers.

Smoking and vaping are not fundamental rights, however, the courts have held that humans have a fundamental right to clean air.

Summertime would be the time to begin the process that makes San Diego public places smoke and vape free.

On behalf of my family of three adult sons, thank you for your consideration to provide them and other youth with an opportunity to experience clean, smoke-free, and vape free air where they work and play.

Thank you for hearing my concerns this afternoon.

Thank you.

And Chair, this concludes non-agenda public comment.

Thank you.

And we will now move to committee members, mayor staff.

Hi, welcome.

And city attorney and independent budget analyst.

If there are any comments, do we have any?

Thank you.

Hearing none, we will move on for any requests for continuance.

Hearing none, we will dispense with the approval of the consent agenda.

Do I have any requests to pull an item from the consent agenda?

Hearing none, we will continue.

Natalie, please proceed with public comment on uh item one consent agenda.

Thank you, Chair.

The public comment page for the consent agenda is now open.

The consent agenda includes item one approval of the committee minutes from April 22nd, 2026.

We have not had any speaker slips submitted here in the committee room.

We have one hand raised in the virtual queue.

I've started the five-minute timer.

Blair Beekman, please unmute and begin.

You'll have one minute.

All right, thank you.

Uh I wanted to speak to the um meeting minutes, and you had an item from last time working on uh San Diego River Conservancy issues.

Um a really good group.

It was a really nice presentation uh from that last meeting, and um it spoke of how you know and all the services they they're working towards the River Conservancy.

Um, you know, they can be working towards uh homeless services as well, and the work with Pant that you do.

Um I've been asking yourselves a lot how we can be talking more about what is the progress of the uh you know the homeless ordinance things in downtown San Diego.

And I wish you could be talking more about how that progress is going, but on the other hand, you're talking about how you're actually housing people at this time a lot more, and it's been really good.

It's been good to learn.

And the River Conservancy has had a part in that and path and and the good work you've been doing.

Thank you for that.

Keep up those efforts and bringing that to the public.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Chair, this concludes public comment on the consent agenda.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I will now turn it over to committee members for any questions or comments and entertain a motion on the consent agenda.

I'll move approval of consent agenda.

Thank you.

And do we have a second?

We have a second from Councilmember Foster and a motion from Councilmember Campillo.

And therefore, we will now take the vote using the voting screen.

And that passes 3 0 with Vice Chair Von Wilbert absent.

Thank you so much.

And we will now move on to item five, which is the item on our information agenda.

Natalie, please introduce item five.

Item five, San Diego Football Club Community Overview Presentation.

Wonderful.

Staff, please introduce yourselves for the record.

Let us know how much time you would like, and please begin when you're ready.

Can you hear us all right?

Yes.

Good afternoon.

My name is Joel Katz, Vice President of Community Impact for San Diego FC.

Good afternoon.

My name is D Can Evil, Senior Director of Community Impact for San Diego Football Club, and we should need about 20 minutes.

Fantastic.

Well, it's an honor to be here.

We're excited to uh share a little bit more about San Diego FC, the newest MLS professional football franchise here in San Diego, a little bit about our community work and uh how we have strategically framed up uh our work to support San Diego and uh dive a little bit deeper into uh how we've been showing up for the last years since uh since we became a team and and came to be playing football here in Snapdragon Stadium.

We'll start with a little bit uh mission and vision.

Yeah, so with all new organizations, it's important to start out with the end in mind.

You know, as an organization, we set out to be the epicenter of football excellence and innovation in North America from a vision standpoint.

That uh innovation manifests in a number of different ways, whether it's the Snapdragon experience that you see there on game day, our performance center, our front office.

Uh there's a number of different things that we're doing that are just atypical across the rest of the league and the sporting community.

Um, but all of that's really geared towards uh our day-to-day mission, looking to create opportunities for talent to flourish and San Diego to Shine.

We do that in a number of different ways, and throughout the rest of the presentation, you'll see how, in a community context specifically, we look to implement our strategic initiatives in order to accomplish that mission.

So I I am because we are.

This comes from the Umbuntu philosophy, and we we heard this from our our head coach, Mikey Varas uh on his first day.

He did a meeting with our entire staff, and he and he talked about the importance and the the approach from his perspective around a person is a person through other people.

The name on the front is more important than the name on the back.

This idea, it emphasizes interconnectedness, intercon it emphasizes humanity, it emphasizes uh shared identity and community.

He also coach also talks about how we win and who we win with, and that matters.

And the reason we bring that up here is from the locker room and the players that you see playing at Snapdragon Stadium to the front office to our community team, and then how we show up in the community culture matters, how we show up matters, being a reflection of this community is mission critical to our club, and we have full buy-in from the head coach and all of the players to from our CEO down to our team.

So it truly is one team.

We talk about woven into one.

You've seen uh woven into one likely around town.

That's a call to arms, and um we take that we take that seriously and with great responsibility.

So, what you have here on the screen right now is uh is an infographic, a lot of numbers.

Uh we'll let your eyes wander as we chat here a little bit.

But this is from our annual report last year in 2025, and you can see some of the areas that San Diego FC prioritizes through our community impact work, but these are all built and predicated off of a lot of listening and learning, a lot of community community circles that we showed up in to understand what are some of the issues, some of the challenges that truly matter to San Diegans.

And so that informed how we've approached this work, but you can see community services important to us, the military community is important to us, creating access for safe spaces to play, trying to problem solve around food insecurity.

So uh variety, variety of ways that that we showed up last year, and again that was year one, and we're we're looking forward to building it here.

Another thing you'll see is you know, 18 municipalities served, so being able to be representative of all of San Diego County while we all we also do have this focus on uh serving community, those communities that are most in need.

This is our strategic framework.

It's a little hard to see from here.

Let's see if I can zoom in.

Whoop, nope, can't zoom in.

I'll just walk you through this.

So from the inside out, there are these are they're in a pie chart here.

We call them our strategic pillars, infrastructure, health, and education.

These are our departure point as spaces.

We'll dive into a little bit more.

But the need for creating more access to safe spaces, refurbishing spaces is an important piece to this puzzle, creating more opportunities for the community to come together and move together, and then from an education front is like creating opportunities for enrichment, creating opportunities for shared learning, and and that comes from our end internally as we're continuing to learn and build our initiatives out, but also sharing you know some of our resources to open up educational opportunities for the community.

Those those circles around our core initiatives that we'll dive into a little bit deeper here.

You can see them as parks and pitches, football growth, community service, military community outreach, football entrepreneurship.

And then at the bottom, these enhancers, these are where our initiatives come to life.

So we've got partners through San Diego FC that we're collaborating with to put on some of these initiatives.

We've got match day at Snapdragon Stadium where we're bringing the community there and we're sharing our spaces with the community.

We do giveaways and donations around town, partnering with schools, local nonprofit organizations, youth service, youth service providers, and then creating more awareness and storytelling and inspiration through our owned media channels, our social media, we've e-marketing newsletters, our website, as well as working with local media outlets to tell stories of inspiration and celebrate community leaders and whatnot.

So the important takeaway from this slide is that there is a strategic framework to how our department and our team shows up in the community, and uh it's all really rooted in evidence and and a lot of listening and learning.

Yeah, here on this slide, you see sort of a visual representation of each of those five initiatives that we just spoke to.

Parks and pitchers, community service, military community outreach, football growth, and player and coach engagement.

One of the things that we've learned over the course of the last year or so that we've been in operation is that San Diegans care quite a bit about San Diego, and there is a tremendous need for more support, right?

You hear about that all the time in this capacity.

So, one of the first things we were able to do just from like a getting things rolling standpoint was stand up a community service initiative.

It's one of the easiest ways that we can come into the community and start being responsive to some of those needs.

So, today, as you might have seen on that uh infographic, we've done probably close to 45, 50 projects across all of San Diego County.

A good number of them have actually been in the city of San Diego in conjunction with the city's uh parks and record department.

Uh the parks and pitches initiative, as you see there is really more of an infrastructure-based initiative.

We look to try to find ways that we can go into communities where there is maybe some existing infrastructure and look to see what we can do to revitalize or refurbish it.

We've had conversations about going and creating net new spaces, but ultimately all of this starts with sharing our existing spaces, right?

In a military community outreach context, we know that the region of San Diego is is a massive military town.

Something like 24% of the GDP of the region has some tie back to the military community.

And so, in an effort to be responsive and reflective of that element of San Diego, we have dedicated community, excuse me, military community outreach program.

Football growth goes hand in hand with player and coach engagement, but essentially football growth looks to do two different things, you know, provide educational opportunities for the next generation of coaches, and also provide play opportunities for youth and communities across the region.

Uh player and coach, that's you know, sort of our first team players.

So if you think about our professional players coming out into the community, coming to schools, coming to libraries, coming to read books to kids, visiting patients in hospitals, that's a huge part of how we can come and, you know, in what's frankly a challenging time is try to provide a little bit of relief, right?

Sport and professional sport in particular, really is an entertainment industry, and we run understand that, but in a community impact context, one of the most impactful ways that we can make that connection with whether that's that fan, that community member, that young child, is to bring their heroes from the screen out into you know their street, for example.

So all of these initiatives are structured in a way that they are technically independent, but they scaffold together very well, they layer on very well.

Um they all got their own plans and their own budgets, but we've got across our team a number of different individuals who are subject matter experts in these spaces that then help go out and deploy these initiatives.

Yeah, and looking here, you know, we've talked a fair amount about 2025 going into 2026, which somehow we're almost in June already of uh our goal coming into season two, year two was really just to go deeper, right?

2025 was all about laying a foundation.

Um, and here we've laid out a few different strategic objectives for how we'd like to increase the number of say individuals who have been impacted or hours of volunteer work that have been generated by our work.

How can we strengthen partnerships and community uh collaboration across whether it's like I said parks and rec, parks foundation, uh the city themselves.

There's a number of different ways that that we're still learning about how we can best come alongside the existing ecosystem and do what we can to offer the platform and and the sort of pulse that we have to pump this thing to the next level.

When we start talking about the community impact fund and somehow the different ways that we grow and measure our impact, those are all just things that we're cognizant of as we look to not just establish a baseline but build from it, that we know that we can focus on this calendar year.

As we build, as we build uh continue to build a little bit, principles to our work, there's a there's a systematic approach to how we we anticipate showing up, and each of these items will build off of each other.

Community-centric, as we uh as we all know the and value the importance of it, this is putting the community at the heart of every decision that we do.

Our work is rooted in need, our work is also rooted in co-creation and collaboration.

Community centric informed everything that you're seeing here, and and we'll be a continued building block.

As a professional, and if you can't tell, we use football and soccer very interchangeably in this context.

Football, as in soccer, football centric is a vehicle quite literally, physically, we are using football as an opportunity to create more access to playing the game.

Metaphorically, we understand as a professional sports team, there's a great opportunity, and there's great convening power in leveraging the brand, our players, uh, and our team, our staff, in order to create positive change.

So, community centric, rooted in the heart of the community, making informed decisions based on community need, football centric, levering the power and potential of a professional sports team brand.

And then this next one here is uh it's important to us that we show up consistently.

It this isn't what we talk a lot about limiting one-off opportunities.

Not every time you see San Diego FC in the community, there's gonna be cameras and players and you know, all the you know, pageantry that comes along with it.

It's about showing up when the cameras aren't there, and it's about showing up consistently, it's about creating skill-building opportunities, it's about having a focus of youth development at the heart of everything.

As we show up consistently, we're able to go deeper.

As we go deeper, we're creating these transformational experiences.

So, from a from a method method from our method includes consistent, deep, and transformation.

And then this last piece here of purpose beyond performance.

What happens when the lights go out at Snapdragon Stadium?

What happens when we're not, you know, winning every game or scoring goals, you know, like we like we have historically, at least early on in our in our tenure.

Purpose beyond performance is about innovating on what this team means for Sandy Agans.

It's about innovating and creating opportunities for uh San Diegans to really, you know, be believers in something greater than themselves, and we consider ourselves to be a vessel of that.

And so there's a tremendous amount of purpose.

It's not just wins and losses, it's about lives touched as well and impact created.

We won't go as deep into this, but from a from a needs based approach, everything is rooted in need.

All of our work is rooted in need.

So we talked a little bit about consistent, deep and transformational.

In order to achieve deep and sustainable change, it is important that we concentrate our efforts in those communities most at need with a focus on creating multiple touch points across each of our initiatives.

So we aim to show up consistently and we aim to go deep.

That builds right into access to opportunity, that young people have access to safe, equitable opportunities, that they have exposure to caring adults that are looking out for their best interests as humans, not just as soccer players, and that these programs, all of our programs focus on the holistic development of young people in communities.

As we build, we we also acknowledge and understand, you know, the limitations to us as a professional sports team.

So, in order for us to uh you know do the best and do justice to the community, we we have to serve as a convener and creating force multiplier opportunities where we can bring in you know other organizations and other funders and you know, other folks around town that that can help you know build trust within communities that can help elevate you know resources and help create more opportunities to to sustainably leave these programs within the communities, creating jobs, workforce opportunities.

We talk a lot about the number of jobs that we're creating within our communities, but this happens through community partnership, and this happens through us, you know, opening our doors and sharing our spaces with folks.

And then the last piece here is being data-driven, is measuring success, is collecting feedback, is understanding what are what are we hoping to achieve and working backwards from there.

And so if we don't focus on moving the needle or understanding which needles we're attempting to move, and then measuring whether or not we made the mark, missed the mark.

We you know, we we're just building off of we're leading off of assumptions, and so to refine our efforts and grow deeper and show up in all the ways that we're talking to you here.

It comes with collecting feedback, it comes with listening and learning from the community, and it comes with sharing you know what it is that we do, involving more stakeholders.

So we are an open book and and truly like see this as um of us as being an extension of the community.

You've heard us mention a number of different times about space as our departure point, and we'll jump into a pretty interesting uh graphic in just a second here, but really just want to emphasize that space is our departure point.

This in which we hold our programs, the space in which we play our games, the space in which we meet and convene community really is where everything kicks off.

And so I think we'll jump into the next piece here.

Oh, we've said probably more than a thousand words.

This is one picture that I think tries to sum up the feeling here, right?

Meeting the kids where they're at.

It's so important that we meet the kids where they are.

It's not feasible for everyone to come to Snapdragon, it's not realistic for everyone to come to our offices in little Italy.

But what we can do with our coaches, with our coaching community, with our cohort and our network, we can talk to the community and meet them where they are and be human beings, and I think that's a little bit of what this funnel this photo shows.

Yeah, and this this builds right into democratizing access.

And what you see here, everything in everything in yellow from the public park, play space, recreation center, and the schools, these are all a part of the community.

These existed before San Diego FC, and we acknowledge so much great work that has happened in communities long before we had, hence the force multiplier is we're here to enhance, convene, as well as distribute some unique what we think are some unique opportunities for the community through a sports team lens.

And what you see every in blue are all the opportunities that that we've brought to life.

This is in a very tight four to six block radius around Colina del Sol Park and City Heights, where we where we piloted and launched all of our community initiatives last year during our inaugural season, but it started with community service.

It started with showing up in the community and getting to know community members, volunteering, bringing our staff.

Our entire every SDFC member has volunteered at Colina del Sol Park multiple times.

We then went and got to know the local service providers and nonprofit um organizations around Colina del Sol.

We built relationships with all of the schools at Horace Man and Faye Elementary and Crawford High School and we recruited recruited.

We we reached out to some young people there and created opportunities for them to play in a street soccer league.

We found some opportunities to train high school students to become community coaches.

So now they're coaching within the communities that they grew up in.

And it'd be remiss to say that every program that Sandy GoFC offers is free of charge.

A young person or a family will never have to pay to participate in any of our programs, and that's a that's just that's just the way that it is.

Um but we've been doing PE clinics during the school day and running after-school programs, and this just gives you an example of density of offerings.

And to DK's point previous around meeting the kids where they're at, we know that we know that transportation can be a barrier for participation in after-school activities or travel sports, and many families are getting priced out of their opportunity to play through the pay-to-play system.

And so over time, you know, it is our hope, not just to not to dismantle the pay-to-play system, but to really meet the community where it's at through these opportunities.

So this gives you a visual example of one community that we started our investment in.

Yeah, that image that you see there at the top is sort of a zoomed in of the previous, where you can really see not just um these two courts in this like lovely image, but when we start talking about, you know, there's different initiatives, parks and pitches, very clearly like is all about the identification, the rehabilitation, and the subsequent activation of space.

Uh and so we like to look at this one because this is the first space we ever did uh at Clina del Sol.

And funny enough, you know, the hyperlocality of our intention, I think is really well represented here.

The artist himself who who commissioned who we commissioned to do this piece, we used to live down the street from Klina del Sol.

And he took inspiration from yes, our community colors that are part of our badge, but ultimately the meaning of Klina del Sol, right?

The Hill of the Sun.

And so if you see there here, you have two different representations of what a sun either rising or sinking uh over a hill might look like.

Uh one of the things that you see with all these different initiatives that they have the sort of a key cadence of of annual moments, and whether that's the refurbishment itself.

Uh we actually went in here and scraped, I think, four inches of old asphalt outlaid new asphalt, and then painted uh this mural on this court.

This one was uh project that was done in conjunction with uh a corporate partner, Qualcomm, who you can see there.

But each one of these spaces then gets activated with block parties with community service projects with the different clinics that we run, tournaments.

We've brought our players into these communities.

We brought our fan supporters into these communities, and you know, in October on the 18th, uh, we'll have our first birthday party for this space here.

Very briefly here, Councilmember Foster.

This is the new space that you were so generously been out there supporting of, and thank you for showing up and sharing your remarks on Sunday.

This is the second Parks and Piss Pitches project at Willie Henderson Sports Complex.

And we just want to show just a quick little example of we talk about ourselves, we talked about the Sunday as being this anti-field of dreams club, not just building spaces and expecting the community to show up, but being really intentional about investing program hours and educational opportunities around the space.

So when we build a space and we invest in a space, you'll see San Diego FC continue to show up, bringing in coaches, bringing in block parties, bringing in other after school and other enrichment opportunities.

So I don't know.

I don't know if that's our 20 minute mark.

That's our 20-minute mark.

Cool.

Oh, we're going to cool.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah, deeper dive here, just on our community service initiative.

Our big objective here is all about developing and mobilizing, not just uh, you know, some specific group, but a diverse network of different volunteers.

We've worked with young people, we worked with high schoolers, middle schoolers, um, adults, our season ticket holders, our our staff.

Um, I think this photo here is uh from an event that we did also at KleanA where we were in the week that we were about to do the grand opening.

You know, said how can we beautify this space?

How can we make this space feel warm and inviting to women to children to families and help set the stage for what frankly was you know a tremendous moment in club history in the inauguration of our first space?

With respect to community service, as we mentioned, it happens all across the county, but all also all across the year.

We have a number of different what we call sort of tenth pall moments.

Um, MOK is a huge week of service that we typically do in April.

We have our sustainability month, we call it woven into one planet month.

Uh, we're gonna organize a really robust back to school campaign later this summer that will kick off in July, and then we end the year with the back uh we call it a season of giving campaign.

There are a number of different other, like I said, sort of themes and and recurring volunteer opportunities.

One in particular that we've struck up with the parks and recreations volunteer office here, whereby we go to all different kinds of parks and places where the game can be played to just help enhance, right?

Whether that's graffiti abatement, trash collection, um, planting of trees.

We we've done a number of different things in an effort to just offset some of the need that is out there in this in this region.

We've talked a little bit about football growth and how we show up leveraging the power of the game in schools, after schools, extending learning environments through our community team.

We've got a part-time staff of 15 right now that are community coaches.

All of these community coaches, they've gone through a minimum of 20 hours of training.

They're all certified in safe sport, they're all certified through the US Soccer Federation grassroots training, but they also have gone through trauma-informed training.

They've gone through training on character, they've gone through training on creating healing centered environments for young people.

So to us, while we're looking to create exposure and more opportunities for young people to enjoy the you know the the healing, healing power and potential of sport and soccer in this case.

It's also about the types of humans that we're empowering off the field.

It's not just about wins and losses and feints and off-ball runs and how hard can you kick the ball.

It's about it's about um resilience, it's about perseverance.

We measure how many friends young people are making in our programs.

We measure, you know, we try to connect this back into the school day to see if there's you know measurable impact on truancy and attendance behavior and coursework.

So uh football is a tool, it is a vehicle for for youth development, and um you're hearing that from a professional sports team.

So it's something that we take super serious is the responsibility of uh families enabling or allowing young people to participate in the programs.

But these do come to life through we have women's uh women-specific uh coaching education courses, clinics specifically for girls, clinics specifically for the military community.

We do tournaments as well, so we'll do like futsal tournaments and public parks on the weekends.

Again, all of this at no cost to the community, and then we also share our spaces.

So we'll bring out to Singing Hills where our performance center is, and we'll do tours.

Um, and and I'll just lastly just go back to the commitment from our head coach and our and all of our players.

Our players are asking us when they can go out into the community.

They don't say no.

The players understand the value that they provide for the community, and so um it's really uh it's really a privilege to work with a team that has such a commitment to be of and for San Diego.

Quickly, as we talked about the importance of the military community to San Diego.

There's a member of our team, Russell Thompson, who's a 27-28-year-old Navy veteran who's worked with worked with the loyal previous to us.

But this is a labor of love for us, but definitely for Russ, who has helped San Diego FC establish relationships with all military installations.

Nearly every military nonprofit in town.

We're working with the Armed Services YMCA and STEP and 08100, and we're we're meeting military families where they're at.

We're creating recognition for our active duty and veteran service members during match day, and we're connecting all of these initiatives that you see military community outreach is a bit of a through line through all of our initiatives, and so um it's a priority for the club to support our active duty veterans and military families, and um you'll see you'll see more to come there.

This last piece, and we've talked a lot about player engagement, but we work very closely with the team.

Player engagement flows through our department as well.

We actually meet with every player during preseason.

We get to know every player.

We want to understand the change they wish to be we want to understand the areas that they're interested investing their time in the causes that they're already investing resources in and then we're able to tailor experiences for our players out in the community so some players want to show up for the military community some players want a guest coach and everything in between and the last picture you see on the left is of our head coach who is fully committed to this cause of being an extension of the community where his focus is on winning professional soccer games he gives so much of his time to our community and um we just we just can't appreciate him enough for setting the standard I know we're at time but this was sort of just more of a discussion-based question you know with respect to everything that you've heard and everything that we've put out there we understand that there are I imagine a number of different um overlapping areas of focus um I don't know much more time we have but happy to have a conversation there or we can we can uh wrap up from there not sure we have a thing thank you so much thanks for that presentation and as a reminder to the committee this is an information item only so no motion is required and Natalie please proceed with public comment thank you chair the public comment period for item five is now open and we do not have any speaker slip submitted from individuals here in the committee room so we'll move to the virtual queue we have two hands raised in the virtual queue each speaker will have one minute to speak to item five phone number ending in eight seven zero zero please unmute and provide your comments.

Uh thank you uh Joyce and Yata Wow you get five stars for the presentation and for your work it it was just amazing I was just glued to the uh T V set so thank you so much for what you're doing and uh what really was great for me was to hear that you had a wonderful vision and a wonderful mission.

Those are two there's just so critical and uh just some of the other things and you know part of your vision and and uh mission excellence innovation flourish shine storytelling uh showing up that that really inspired me I need to show up more and in a lot of areas and thank you for that inspiration and thank you for loving on our communities I get it and I just wish all of you the best of success you're doing what's right uh one thing I don't get I I would prefer uh soccer club uh but I know you you've got a reason and and a big thank you this does keep our time please keep our flat fans safe please thank you our next speaker Miss Maxwell please unmute and provide your comments thank you Francine Maxwell Southeastern San Diego resident thank you so much for the presentation because your organization your audio is matching your video um you guys know that you got the best swag and just keep up the good work I would like for you to consider with your team to capture the moment we have all areas throughout the city and county of San Diego pushing love right now so if you could put something on the calendar where everybody from every faith every religious organization can come and everybody just continue to push love while they're trying to enjoy an activity with you that would be my only ask again very appreciative of your intentionality and you guys are walking around with a pocket full of receipts please keep up the good work and looking forward to the next steps.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Blair Beekman please unmute and begin.

Hi thank you Blair Beatman um thanks for this item thanks for the public comment uh on this item um I wanted to quickly offer uh we're at a time of uh death brief and morning.

Um we often don't know what to say to each other, and we often say the wrong things.

And um this was an item that tried to be friendly and community minded.

Thank you.

Um I can this be a time to ask that um I hope we can be working on uh uh community I mean uh committee meeting minutes to be able to be a bit more flexible that some items may need one minute public comment.

Other items may possibly have a minute and a half.

Um if that can be applicable today, that would be helpful and uh just a reminder that you have thanks for the thank you.

And our final speaker in the queue is Tony.

Please unmute and begin.

Yes, hello.

Good afternoon, City Council.

Uh thank you for the presentation from the group that just spoke.

Uh definitely in favor of what they're doing.

Love what they are offering to the city.

Uh love that they have a concrete plan and love that it's something that incorporates bringing the community together through sports, uh, through civic engagement, through civic participation.

That's a true way to build community.

Uh love what the public comments were earlier this morning.

Um love loved hearing what uh Blair Beekman had to say.

Uh loved hearing what Francine had to say.

Uh so thank thank you all very much, and uh hopefully this uh can move forward.

Um interesting, interested in seeing where it goes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Chair, this concludes public comment on item five.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for that wonderful presentation and congratulations.

Uh you're so new.

Last year was your first year, and I understand nationally you were the second in second place, which is amazing for your very first year.

So thank you so much uh for everything you do.

We are so happy to have the representatives from the San Diego football club with us today.

Football club.

San Diego FC represents more than professional soccer.

The club reflects the diversity and pride of our region and has quickly become a very important part of our community, and thanks to you for doing that.

We appreciate your commitment not only to the sport, but to the youth development, community engagement, and creating meaningful opportunities throughout our city.

Through its outreach efforts, partnerships, and investment in local families and young athletes, San Diego FC continues to demonstrate the positive impact that sports organizations can have well beyond the field.

Thank you for your leadership, your partnership, and your continued work throughout the community.

We look forward to an exciting season the rest of this year, and it has been good to start.

Let's get going even more.

And I'll now turn it over to our committee members for any questions or comments.

We'll start with Council Member Campillo.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our guests from San Diego from San Diego FC.

Um being at the many games and uh just appreciating um the beauty of uh the game that our team is putting on there.

It's not just the product on the field that's clearly having the impact and and putting San Diego into the minds of people across the world as they watch the soccer games, but our local youth uh and the businesses nearby that are uh just energized by what uh Sundays and Saturdays and occasionally a Wednesday will will bring when San Diego FC takes the field.

Um I just have to say uh how appreciative I am for the fact that when the city uh struggles with uh park and recreation programming, we have amazing community partners like San Diego FC that keeps pumping out programs and opportunities for young people.

Um and it's truly truly amazing, and it's not just our city, it's it's the entire region.

Um I do uh have a question since we're about to meet the World Cup uh the pause in the MLS schedule because of the World Cup that's coming up.

Uh does the team have any uh events or uh uh things that are going on in the community because I know we're probably gonna have a few players uh playing for their various home countries, uh including the United States at the uh at the World Cup across our country and in Canada and Mexico.

Yeah, um I'll jump in there.

We have a number of things.

Just because yeah, we're not playing games at Snapdragon doesn't mean that the club is not active.

So actually we're doing, I want to say it's a 38-day residency uh down in Mission Beach at Fitz Social.

So we'll air every single game uh also free to charge free of charge to access.

I think that you can buy things there when you're there.

Um every single watch party for every single match of the World Cup will be played there.

I know in a community service capacity, we have a number of different events scattered throughout June and July as well.

Um I know that we have I think uh after school program, summer school program that's starting.

There's a number of different things, but I'd say primarily World Cup Watch parties, Fitz Social and Missing Beach, and then if you're interested in more volunteer opportunities on our um sandyofc.com/slash volunteer, you'll find out more information there.

Understood.

Well, I appreciate that.

Uh I uh just um people need to plug into this because uh coming in first in the Western conference last year uh and continuing turning a corner in the last few weeks uh and fighting throughout uh a rough patch.

I I'm just I would encourage everyone to just watch the team and and to really see just the joy that's coming to people's faces during the game.

Um that's the type of thing we need more of in San Diego so people can meet from all 18 different cities and the county and realize that we're one reason one region.

So uh thank you for all you do, and one last little note.

I have to say I know the arts community appreciates uh the flair and style that San Diego FC brings to not just their jersey but all the different attire and the artwork that goes on.

So it's not just a sports impact, it's uh many other industries as well uh that see it, and it couldn't happen if it wasn't for uh the Monsour family and uh the Sequan tribe doing so much to make sure that it the impact is more than just on the field, though I do like a good off ball run, as you pointed out earlier.

So thank you very much for all you're doing.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for that.

And now we'd like to call on Councilmember Foster.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, and thank you for the um presentation.

Um my colleagues um kind of touched on points.

I just want to say thank you.

Um, you know, I've been out to Willie Henderson a couple times.

Um I think I just to follow up on what you said, consistency is important.

Um I told you on Sunday, um San Diego FC came in and said you want to be a good partner, um, and I think you have done just that.

Um in uh based on um the conversations that I have had, um, you're just starting and just beginning.

Um the um efforts for the hard courts at um Willie Henderson Park.

Um, once we were done, um we couldn't get the kids off off the court.

Um, and it was a full day out there.

I think every grass field um had a game, a soccer game um in progress, multiple.

Um and you indicated you wanted to make sure you you held something like that on this on a day when the park was activated.

Um, and so just want to thank you for that.

Also, um I I think it's important to note um when you talk about community, you have fully engaged with um at you know, at least in my community with the community uh rec groups, um, which I think speaks volumes uh to your intentionality um and your commitment to um the communities in which you're doing the good work that you're doing.

Um also got to just shout out the um uh Harvey uh family foundation.

Um you are working closely with them on Willie Henderson, as I said, that is their home.

Um just as you have adopted Willie Henderson, um, they are looking to do some great things there because we want to activate the space.

Um and um just from my perspective, um our parks and rec is so important to community um that every family, every young person has a place um that they can go to that's safe to have um good fun to um share that fun with their neighbors and community because um I am all about community.

So I just want to say thank you, DK.

Always good to see you out there.

Everybody knows you.

Um, and uh just thank you for everything that you guys have done um and continue to do.

So look forward to the continued partnership.

Um in we use the word partner, but it seems as if you are really part of the community, so thank you.

Appreciate all your efforts.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate that.

Thank you so much uh to my fellow committee members and thank you guys.

Uh we are fans, as you may have noticed, and we just couldn't be more thrilled to have you here in San Diego and all the good things that you're doing.

And DK, uh I just gotta give you a special shout out because everything you ever do turns into wonderful, and I so appreciate it.

And thank you so much.

And we really appreciate you.

So that concludes item number five for today, and we want to thank you again.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And we're now going to take up our discussion agenda.

We will be starting with items two and three.

And items two and three will be a joint presentation.

And after this joint presentation, we will take public comment on both of the items.

The committee members will provide questions, comments, and entertain a motion for item two, and then when that concludes, council members will provide questions, comments, and entertain a motion for item three.

So even though we're presenting together, we're going to take comments and votes separately on items two and items three.

And this is our annual fiscal year presentation about the parks and rec department maintenance assessment districts, MAND, and also our maintenance assessment district annual reports for Economic Development Department.

And we really appreciate you being here.

How much time will you be needing?

And please introduce yourselves too, and then you can begin.

Thank you.

For our presentation this afternoon, we'll be needing seven minutes, please.

Good afternoon, Council Members.

Thank you for your time today.

My name is Michael Jones, Assistant Deputy Director with the Parks and Recreation Department.

With me is Rhea Aguinaldo, Small Business Engagement Specialist with the Economic Development Department.

A maintenance assessment district, or MAD, is a legal mechanism to allow property owners the ability to fund improvements and activities within a boundary defined by an assessment engineer.

These districts take on many different scopes of service, several of which are shown here.

Landscaping is the most common type of improvement, generally occurring in medians, parks, and rights of way.

Mads operate with the legal authority to engage in improvements and activities under the guidance of legislation at both the state and local levels.

State law, the municipal code, and city council policy are each written to allow districts maximum operational flexibility.

A primary goal of these policies is to give communities the ability to offer virtually any type of service, feasible uh any type of feasible improvement or activity, I should say.

Next, I'd like to turn it over to RIA to cover the next section.

Rhea.

Thank you, Mike.

Good afternoon, committee members.

Mads are located in every council district from the border to the northernmost parts of the city.

There are currently sixty-four MADs within the city of San Diego, of which 54 receive oversight from parks and recreation and 10 from economic development.

The city's assessment areas map is an interactive tool available to the public to explore where MADs operate.

Economic development mads shown in blue here are located in commercial areas, providing related services such as beautification, retail retention, and district branding through seasonal banners.

Parks and recreation MADs, several shown here in yellow, operate primarily in residential neighborhoods.

Each district is governed by its own engineers report and assessment structure, which makes oversight and accountability key components to managing a MAD.

To support this, the city uses various types of contracts to administer services and activities.

For parks and recreation, the districts are managed by city staff with service delivery through contracts with for-profit vendors.

Bird Rock and Civita are the exceptions managed by nonprofit organizations.

For economic development, the districts primarily operate under management agreements with nonprofit organizations with service delivery by staff or through subcontracted vendors.

In fiscal year 27, all 10 districts will be managed by nonprofits based in their respective communities, including Barrio Logan and Central Commercial, which will transition from city management.

Seven districts are managed by local business associations that also manage a business improvement district.

This alignment allows for coordination of resources and priorities and an opportunity to leverage assessments for fundraising to support more services in those districts.

The next two slides show examples of the visible impact of MADs in their communities.

Parks and recreation MADs shown here support the maintenance and beautification of landscaped areas, parks, and medians.

These districts are well positioned to coordinate with city departments and local stakeholders for effective service delivery that aligns with neighborhood needs.

Economic development mads contribute to cleaner and more welcoming business districts.

Shown here are some examples of day-to-day activities to include landscape maintenance, litter abatement, and beautification.

These districts also create opportunities for community and property owner involvement to help guide service priorities, such as through neighborhood cleanups and district walkthroughs.

With that, I'll turn it back over to Michael.

Thanks, Rhea.

Each district is formed with an accompanying assessment engineers report and is implemented upon a successful vote of affected property owners.

This is effectively the governing document that specifies which improvements can occur and at what frequencies.

The difference between general and special benefit is an important distinction.

Mads may only fund those services which are above the city standard and confer a special benefit to assessment payers.

The engineers report is updated annually to include new parcel data, changes in land use, and an updated budget for each district.

It is important to note that assessments may increase, decrease, or remain the same based upon the needs of the district and fiscal considerations.

Some elements of the report, such as boundaries, assessment methodology, locations, and service frequencies may not be updated through the annual process.

These changes in assessment levies are shared with the community members, stakeholders, or advisory committees associated with one or multiple districts.

The proposed actions before the council today for item two include the approval for the fiscal year 2027 annual reports.

In addition, the department seeks authorization to allow the CFO to expend funds and collect revenues that will sustain the operations of all 54 districts under parks and recreation oversight.

Additionally, the committee would allow the CFO via the department to execute the manual billing of property owners who do not receive a property tax bill.

Although we are presenting the MAD program together, each item requires a separate vote by this committee.

For item three, the proposed actions include approval of the fiscal year 27 annual reports for the Economic Development Department.

Authorize the CFO to appropriate and expend MAD funds and manual billing of property owners not billed by the county.

Proposed actions four and five request consideration to waive MAD Council Policy 100-21 for Little Italy and Adams Avenue MADS, allowing each district's operating reserve to fall below the required minimum of 10% of operating expenditures.

The proposed actions ensure our department's ability to submit the assessments to the county by the August 10th deadline for inclusion on the owner's property tax bill.

All of this ensures a seamless continuity of service.

For more information, members of the public can visit each department's webpage and the interactive map outlining district boundaries.

These are all useful resources for learning more about the maintenance assessment district program in San Diego.

Finally, this concludes our presentation.

Thank you for your time today.

Thank you so much for the wonderful presentation.

And uh I would now like to ask Natalie uh if there is any public comment.

Thank you, Chair.

Yes, the public comment period for item two and item three is now open.

As reminder, this is an opportunity to speak to item two, fiscal year 2027 maintenance assessment district annual reports for parks and recreation department.

And item three, fiscal year 2027 maintenance assessment district annual reports for economic development department.

Each speaker will have one minute per item for a maximum time of two minutes, and please indicate which item or items you're speaking to.

Chair, we've received two speaker slips here in the committee room.

Ben Nichols, please approach the lecture, and you've indicated that you wish to uh speak to item three, so that will be one minute on the clock for you to manage.

Hello and thank you.

My name is Benjamin Nichols, and I'm with the Hillcrist Business Association.

We manage the maintenance assessment district in Hillchris.

I'm here to urge support of continuing the program in Hillchrist.

We've been up and running for about two years now, and the results on the ground are really terrific.

Um almost every day we are in the neighborhood.

Actually, every day we're in the neighborhood um picking up trash, trimming trees, um conducting security patrols.

Um we are um, really making a tangible difference on the ground in the neighborhood.

I am happy to announce that we've also filled every vacant tree well in the neighborhood with the brand new tree, and we continue to maintain the iconic Hillcrist sign and the Hillcrist Pride flag.

I'm also happy to note that the HBA has managed to keep our administrative overhead of this district to below 10%, and we have not increased the assessment rights at all in the last two years.

I hope the council will feel the same and support the program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I also received a speaker slip from Alexandra Perez Dema who wishes to register her position in favor but does not wish to speak.

So this concludes in-person public testimony for items two and three.

So we will now move to the virtual queue.

I've started the five-minute timer.

We have four hands raised in the virtual queue.

We'll begin with Chris Gomez.

Chris, you have your hand raised if you can please unmute and provide your comments.

You'll have one minute.

Yes, thank you very much.

Uh, my name is Christopher Gomez.

I'm the chief executive administrator for the Little Woodley Association.

Um I am uh requesting that City Council members uh move item three forward as well as the rest of the items and support staff recommendation.

Uh Littlewoodley Association manages both a business improvement district and a maintenance assessment district, which allows us as a collaborative effort to really create a dynamic community, and it's because of the uh property owners' efforts to have these special benefits and resources that help us leverage uh to make uh little lee a uh successful urban community in downtown San Diego.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker with their hand raised is Tony.

Tony, can you please indicate which item or items you wish to speak to.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes, uh, I would like to speak to item num uh number two and number three, please.

Okay, two minutes to manage, please.

Okay, thank you.

Before I want before I begin, I just wanted to say I wanted to thank uh council member um Campbell.

Um I just wanted to say what a what a joy it is to have a council member uh that smiles at uh the way that you do and the way that you have today and the way that you've led um this subcommittee today.

It's uh it's really wonderful.

And um your smile is contagious and the energy, your your positivity is really inspiring.

And um, I was kind of having a bad day today, and uh it kind of really brought me up.

So please keep up the wonderful job that you're doing.

I also wanted to um say uh Henry Foster III, it's so great to have you back.

Um I know Blair Beekman mentioned it multiple times.

We really, really missed you a couple of weeks ago um when they were uh doing the the police budget review a couple Fridays ago.

Um hope everything's okay, but really glad that you're back.

Um we definitely uh can use all the help that we can get um having more members of city council asking the tough questions and demanding greater accountability from our police force.

Um and then moving on to uh the actual topics themselves.

Wow, um, every time I come to one of these meetings, there's just so much information.

There's so much to learn.

Um, what a what another interesting program, the MAD program.

Um, all these different acronyms to become familiar with.

Um, I'm just a wash in information, just absorbing it, uh taking it all in, and just grateful uh to all of y'all for the work that you do.

Um I know that it's uh a ton uh that goes into all of the information you have to study to be able to um consolidate and accurately uh speak to all of these specific issues.

So um good luck on all the work that you're doing and uh thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, phone number ending in 870.

Please indicate if you wish to give comment to item two or item three or both.

Yes, I will speak on both.

Please begin.

Uh Joy Sanyata.

First of all, let me just uh I'll do three first.

Well, first I'll say this.

Uh I say yes on both two and three.

And on three, just very briefly.

Uh thank you uh director uh with many hats, Bibbler.

Uh we just uh appreciate your work, it's unbelievable.

And uh thank you for your work on the mads, and uh just know that you're valued and appreciated.

So, now here's the glitch for me on two.

I just can't get over it, and I was stuck on this last time last year, whenever the annual report identifies contributions made by the city to provide general benefits for management for maintenance and improvements, also confer special benefits.

Now, the general benefits also are involved with Prop 218.

So we have general benefits and we have special benefits.

Now, on the special benefits, I think on both, uh, we have an assessment engineer, and the assessment engineer does these wonderful reports, and originally uh many of them and other items were approved back on July 22nd, 2016.

So all those were in place with the assessment engineer in charge and doing all those good things.

So I've reread this and reread it.

I just don't feel like it's transparent and monitored enough the special and the general benefits.

I just can't get my head around it, but my heart's around it.

So with Andy Seals' team in charge, I do trust the process, and thank you for the presentation on the items.

Very informative and love to all.

Thank you.

The five-minute timer just concluded.

We have two hands remaining in the queue.

We will take no additional callers after these two.

Blair Beekman, please unmute unmute and indicate if you wish to speak to item two or item three or both.

Uh both items, please.

Please begin.

Hi, thank you.

Thanks for the words of Tony.

He remembered, uh, yeah.

Thank you that councilperson Foster is here.

And my feelings are the same uh with Councilperson Campbell at this time.

Uh it's nice, it's nice to hear her voice.

Thank you.

Um, I wanted to comment um, you know, with with the actions of these uh young people and the events of this earlier this week.

Those uh that way of working has actually some goals sometimes of uh working to actually bring community together, but it's through the forms of mass scale and death is how to bring it together.

Um I don't I think it's kind of a backward system and way to work, and I think we're learning how to avoid that and teach our young people that that's not a good way to solve problems.

Uh learning to teach that's important.

Um, we now have issues that we're gonna have difficulties talking to each other about a lot of things, things will be awkward.

Police are gonna want to be building a lot more surveillance tech now, and we're gonna have to address that.

And I think I really hope we can keep our heads full for the next six months and and really work out the review process first before jumping and diving into uh any new funding for tech stuff with their MAD issues that you have available to yourself.

Um, like what Tony has been at talking about this week.

I mean, uh police uh they have a lot of ALPRs available to to review and understand what's going on in real time.

We need to learn better practices of communication with each other in real time.

I think that's what's key, and not more and more tech, but how do we communicate that?

There may be a bunch of reasons why we can't communicate better.

Now, those are the kind of issues we need to review, and not more and more tech, please.

Uh to conclude, I mean I've been talking since the um flood issues of 2024 that the park committees, uh commission park services has to talk more about clearly what uh tech is doing in its parks.

They can't you can't just say sports utility check and make that a word for everything.

We have to clear we're talking about biometric tech and all our tech.

We have to be accountable to continue good work.

This concludes your time.

Our final speaker in the queue is Wesley.

Please indicate which item or items you wish to speak to and begin.

Yeah, calling in favor of items number two and three.

My name is Wesley Quatsch.

I'm the director of business quarter enhancements at City Heights CDC, and we manage the MAD here in City Heights, Along University.

Happen to you and Fairmont Avenue.

Um our crew is out there five days a week.

Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we do literary payment, trash pickup, uh, we uh take both items to the landfill.

We make maybe two or three trips out to landfill, you know, per day.

Uh Tuesday, Thursdays we focus on uh graffiti abatement, uh landscaping power washing.

I think our fastest graffiti abandonment was made within twenty minutes of being reported and being you know covered up.

Uh we've received a lot of positive feedback in the community in regards to the changes and improvements throughout the neighborhood, and we look forward to continuing the work.

I want to give a shout out to EDD and Rhea for their support, and thank you for your time.

Thank you.

And Chair, this concludes public comment on item two and item three.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

It's uh such a pleasure to hear all the good news, all the hard work that's going around in our communities and neighborhoods uh to make our city better.

And I'm now going to turn to committee members for questions, comments, and entertain a motion.

First of all, for item number two.

Chair Kim, uh by I'm sorry.

Council mayor can be almost made you chair.

It's all good.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much to our staff uh for putting this in front of us.

Uh and I'm reminded how important these MADs are, uh, because the maintaining the community assets in conditions that our community deserves is one of the first ways in which people interact with the city and they see it with their own eyeballs.

So uh we get a lot of questions about about mads to my office.

Um but luckily for us as it relates to item two with the park and rec department, also item three with the EDD department, um, we're seeing really good success in this.

So I know our community members are more involved with this process.

Uh they can um uh keep the community clean.

Uh all the things, all the benefits that flow from this uh are are really important.

I know we've seen this, we have to see this annually at committee.

Uh so we've had this discussion many, many times before.

Uh so as it relates to item two, Chair, I will move approval of the item.

Thank you so much.

We have a second.

Councilmember Foster.

Uh yes, just um quick question.

Um I see some of these um as you look through all the backup materials, talks about um CPI increases.

I know we have a couple of um mads and so forth in the in district four.

How d do all mads have a CPI increase, or how is that how does that work out?

Because I know what we're experiencing with the things that we are um doing, but I would assume if they still have work going on at some point they have to deal with that.

How is that done?

Thank you for the question, Councilmember Foster.

It is a it is a uh very fundamental question in terms of how to uh how to address that cost increase and an annual cost increase of things we see, such as inflation.

Um so the the way that works is upon formation of each of each district, the allowance of assessment increases or decreases is conferred upon by the uh property owners upon formation.

So at that time, the district decides how the um how the fees will be increased or if they would remain the same.

Usually there's a cap, a threshold, and each district being distinct in nature, that's always been decided upon at the onset or upon a reballot for uh the example of many of the many of the mads in district four have a have reached their threshold of increases.

So in that instance, one of the things to contend with is the level of service as the cost goes up.

How do we contend with that?

So that's something that has to be addressed long-term, but in terms of the um the CPI increases that are allowable under many of the MADs, we do like to see those uh consistent and keep up with the inflationary factors like labor, gas prices, et cetera, all the things we're seeing in our current economic situation.

Okay, thank you for that.

Um we may reach out just to have some more detailed conversations.

Um but also how does it work as new property owners or come, you know, as properties are changing hands.

Is there some type of formal notice as they come in, or is it part of their, I don't know, entitlement process or or or title process as they get informed on the mat.

How does that how does that work?

That's that's another good question, sir.

That's a that's done each year through the annual update process.

Changes in land use and parcel data are captured in each each year's assessment role via the property tax bill.

So each each new property owner would be responsible for looking at their property tax bill and then seeing which MAD they're associated with.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you so much.

I will um second uh the motion.

Thank you so much.

Uh and uh now we have a motion by Councilmember Campbell, at a second by councilmember Foster, and this is on item number two for the parks and recs.

Uh we will take the vote on the voting screen.

And that motion passes three zero with vice chair von Wilfrid absent.

Thank you so much.

And that concludes uh our voting for item two, but we're now going to turn it over to committee members for questions, comments, and entertain a motion for item three, the economic development mands.

Move approval of the item.

Thank you.

We have a motion by Councilmember Campillo, a second by Council Member Foster.

Thank you so much.

And uh we will now take the mo the vote on the voting screen.

And that passes three zero with vice chair of the absolute.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

It's just always so uplifting to hear about the mats every year.

We really appreciate you.

We appreciate them.

Thank you so much.

And that concludes uh item three as well as item two.

And so Natalie, please introduce item number four.

Item four, proposed fiscal year 2027 recreation center fund budgets, opportunity fund budget, and 2025 come play outside report.

Chair.

Well, thank you so much for coming.

This is another one of those uplifting things that we so enjoy hearing about, and uh we want to thank you and ask you to please introduce yourselves and let us know how much time you'd like for the presentation.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair and members of the council.

My name is Sarah Irazzo.

I'm the deputy director with the Parks and Recreation Department, Citywide Recreation Services Division, and we're requesting 14 minutes today.

Wonderful.

Please go ahead and and uh would you please also introduce yourself and then you guys proceed.

Yes, good afternoon.

My name is Salami Martinez.

I'm the program equity manager with citywide recreation services under parks and recreation department as well.

Thank you so much.

Please proceed.

Thank you.

Today we have two items we combined into one.

So we're bringing here the annual uh proposed fiscal year 2027 recreation center fund budgets, as well as the opportunity fund budget, and then a glimpse into the 2025 come play outside report.

Back in 2018, the Parks and Recreation Department created recreation center funds.

We have 62 currently, one for each recreation center and one each for our age well services program and our therapeutic recreation services program.

In addition, in 2022, Council Policy 700-48 was created, which established the opportunity fund, which is a fund that allows us to expand equitable services across the city of San Diego.

Going back to recreation center funds, these are special revenue funds that are designated to enhance recreation programs and special events and maintenance projects across the city of San Diego.

These budgets are developed by center directors at each of the recreation centers through community input beginning in the fall of each year, either through their community recreation group or through public input at community events or passing through the recreation center and through the programs that they're offering.

These budgets are then analyzed through our staff as well as the Department of Finance to ensure that they are prepared for this meeting here.

Fiscal year 27, we're seeing a range of budgets as low as 23,000 and as high as just under 1 million, with an average at just over 150,000.

These ranges vary significantly based on the size of the recreation center and its ability to run programs, generating revenue through those programs, in addition to being able to rent out facility space, which also generates revenue for the fund.

And so some of our smaller sites, like a recreation center one, which just has a singular room, doesn't have the capacity to run a lot of programs, generate a lot of revenue, and therefore has the lower end budgets.

And in addition, or contrary, the larger recreation centers that might have two gymnasium courts, multiple meeting rooms, and permit many neighborhood parks in that surrounding community tend to have higher volume recreation center fund balances.

These funds, as I mentioned earlier, go directly towards the expenses for the programs and community events and the minor maintenance projects taking place at each of the recreation centers.

In addition, might go towards floor mats for karate program, gymnastics equipment, basketballs, etc.

In fiscal year 27, we are looking at generating just over $5.4 million in revenue across all funds.

We are anticipating a carry forward ending this fiscal year of $9.7 million.

And we do have identified $555,000 for the opportunity fund allocations in fiscal year 27 as well.

Our proposed budget expense for all 62 funds is $9.5 million, leaving us a carry forward projected at the end of fiscal year 27 of just over $6.1 million.

More details are outlined in the staff report and attachment A on this.

This slide is just going to show you a little bit of how we've bounced back since the pandemic.

You'll see the far left is when we shut down going into the pandemic, and now we're seeing here in fiscal year 25, 26, 27 that we are getting back to our pre-pandemic revenue and expenses and programming.

Another thing to highlight is with the support of the San Diego Parks Foundation.

A lot of our recreation center fund balances have increased in our underserved communities because the foundation has provided so much financial support directly to our programs and events.

Diving into the opportunity fund allocation process, as I mentioned earlier this year, we have $555,000 that was identified for allocation.

This is a 38% increase from last year, and primarily due to the fee increases that took place last April in 2025.

In addition, the recommended lease fee from the Surf Cup Soccer Lease at the Polo Fields will generate $100,000 into this fund.

That first contribution will be paid in January of 2027.

This amount also attributes the donations from the Carmel Valley and Lois J.

Mangarelli Canyon side recreation center funds of $25,000 and 10,000, respectively.

The opportunity fund committee consisted of six department staff this year, and we added our philanthropic partner with the San Diego Parks Foundation to join in in this process and provide valuable input.

Policies were reviewed, prior methodologies, historical recommendations, were all reviewed.

Rankings were identified using the objective scoring matrix, and that basically determines the available funds each rec fund has their proposed budgets.

If they are in a community of concern as identified by the Climate Equity Index, and if there's an aquatic facility adjacent to that, recreation center, excuse me.

In addition, per recommendation from council previously, the committee requested all sites requesting opportunity fund allocations to expend their recreation center fund budget down to allow the expanded allocation of the opportunity funds to either more recreation centers or an increased value, making that available.

So we've done that now two years, and it's significantly enhanced our ability to provide a higher budget and/or again expand those amount of centers receiving funding.

The committee identified 14 sites this year eligible for opportunity fund allocations, which is an increase from 11 sites last year, and $85,000 budget, and that is also an increase from $65,000 last year.

This slide here will give you a quick overview on all the allocations that have taken place since the opportunity funds inception.

And you'll see in total we've had 15 sites that have received funding over the course of the year or will with this allocation coming up.

We began with six sites in fiscal year 24 with a budget of up to $84,000, 10 sites in fiscal year 25 with a budget of $50,000, 11 sites in fiscal year 26 with a budget of $65,000, and again proposing for fiscal year 27, 14 sites at $85,000.

Diving a little bit more in detail of the sites that are proposed for allocation in the upcoming fiscal year.

You'll see we have Azalea, Stockton, Caesar Solis, Penn Athletic Field, Willie Henderson, Kalina Del Sol, Parc de la Cruz, Skyline Hills, Mountain View, Bay Terraces, Choice Lake, City Heights, South Crest, and Encanto.

The slide will show you their opportunity fund score.

The higher the score, the more need they have financially for the funding.

We also identify their projected available fund balance moving into fiscal year 27, their proposed budget, and the amount of opportunity fund that is proposed to be allocated to bring them to that $85,000 budget outlook.

You'll also see on the slide that there are a handful of sites that are receiving HUD grant funding to support the expansion of the Come Play Outside programming.

The committee felt it was still important to maintain these sites in this allocation process in the event that the federal HUD funding is no longer available.

The proposed actions that we are asking for this item is to authorize the chief financial officer to appropriate and expend recreation center funds in fiscal year 27 as detailed in attachment A.

Make available the estimated fiscal year 26 recreation center fund carry forward to appropriate and expend during fiscal year 27.

Authorize the chief financial officer to appropriate the transfer of the opportunity fund fees into the identified recreation center funds for fiscal year 27 as detailed in attachment B.

And lastly, authorize the chief financial officer to expend recreation center funds generated from permit fees that fall within one of the exceptions to proposition 26 in any geographical area, regardless of where collected to promote equity and parks and recreation department wide programs.

With that, I'll take a pause.

I will transfer it over to Salome.

She's going to give you a quick overview of our Come Play Outside program, and then we'll be happy to take questions.

Thank you.

So today I'm going to provide a recap on the Come Play Outside program for 2025.

And as a little background, this was a program that began as part of Mayor Todd Gloria's Summer for All of Us initiative.

This program targets youth and historically underserved communities and aims to provide equitable access to a variety of recreational activities and events for all to attend.

Since the inception of the program, this program has reached over 200,000 youth seniors and adults.

Over the past five years, the program participation and funding has fluctuated as seen on the table below.

Yet the ComePlay Outside program has remained resilient and successful.

This year, we did see a reduction in program participation due to last week's level up camps, which we do in partnership with the San Diego Unified School District, and a reduction of the deep sea fishing trips that were offered.

This was due to changes in funding contributions for sponsored programs.

However, overall, we did see a slight increase in available funding for all the contributions for 2025 programming, and our goal each year is always to increase participation and funding as much as possible.

The Complay Outside programs and events are supported through a combination of city funding grants and donations.

We appreciate all our funders that help support these programs, including the San Diego Parks Foundation, the County of San Diego, Feeding San Diego, San Diego Foundation, our local San Diego PD, Preventing Drowning Foundation, and the CEK Foundation.

In 2025, more than 2.1 million in contributions were utilized to support the Come Play Outside program.

And since the inception, the department has received over 9.9 million in total contributions.

Here's a summary of our 2025 programs.

We expanded programming across 36 recreation centers and four aquatic facilities during the months of May through September, which is those summer months, with a target investment in council districts three, four, seven, eight, and nine.

Our primary focus for programming was based on documented gaps in access to recreational and enrichment opportunities.

So in 2025, we're proud to announce that the program reached over 54,000 participants through about a little over 1,400 programs overall that we offered.

And I'll briefly go over this table here that provides a five of the last five years of programming and attendance and how the program has grown.

This graph includes day camps that are staff run, our specialty camps where this is where you're going to see the gymnastics, the karate, and the STEM programming that we're trying to add opportunities in these areas, our nature camps and our teen nights.

From left to right, you'll see numbers from 2021 all the way through this last year of 2025.

We saw an increase in those day camps offered and some fluctuation in the specialty camp numbers as mentioned earlier due to less level up camps.

Our nature camp, which is staff-led program, is rotated around each week to different sites to allow all communities an opportunity to participate and experience those nature-based programs and those field trips, which is always greatly received by each community.

Another program, which is the teenight program, is offered for youth ages 13 to 17 and provides a safe place where youth can recreate and socialize with their peers.

These events are free for teens to attend and include food activities like games, sports, video games, and field trips.

There was an increase in participation as we had over 4,000 participants this year, and this is an increase compared to only 3,500 last year.

In addition to those ongoing summer programs, we had our very successful Parks After Dark program that's hosted at five locations.

This year we only offered seven weeks of the program, but that's because we had one week less as we had to adjust with the school schedules as they got out of school earlier and go into school earlier.

Another successful year that took place every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 5 to 8.

There was a total of 99 events, so that's that decrease of the one week, from 111 last year, with a total of 36,000, a little over 36,000 people who attended.

These events offered wide variety of activities for all ages, community resources, and free meals for the youth.

We're excited that we are planning again this year's Parks After Dark and will continue these efforts for each of the five locations this year.

There was also an increase in aquatic programming and participation due to an increase in contributions, which allowed for more staff-led learn to swim program classes and free swimming lessons that were offered in conjunction with our parks after dark events at both City Heights and Memorial Pool.

And as mentioned earlier, we did have a reduction in the deep sea fishing trips.

As you see here, we only had one field trip this year compared to the five last year.

But we have identified, as Sarah mentioned, the federal HUD grants that we will have available this year to be able to bring those fishing trips back and offer them again within each of the communities.

And with that said, the city is committed to provide equable access to enjoyable and fulfilling recreational opportunities for all residents.

We're going to continue our efforts here in expanding program opportunities and different programs in each community.

We'll reassess the community needs and get feedback from each of the different locations to see what kinds of programs they'd like to have as we know that interests change year after year.

We'll continue to seek those funding sources and those grants so that we have more available funds to be able to provide the programs.

And then our community recreation needs assessment is supposed to be completed here in May or June, and we'll be taking those recommendations and applying them here as well.

And with that, we look forward to another year of programming for 2026, which is this summer that will be kicking off here in the next couple weeks.

And we invite you all to read the full Come Play Outside report and see all the amazing photos that we provided and all the fun that the kids had this last year, and we continue these efforts this year.

With that, um, that's the end of my presentation, and we'll open it up to any questions that you may have.

Thank you so much for that wonderful presentation.

That's just amazing how successful these programs are.

We really appreciate uh what you've done.

And uh I wonder uh before I uh ask for public comment, if you could just give us a website where the public can go and see where and when these events are coming.

Yes, um, we do have our uh event calendar that is on the city website.

So if you go to our park and rec homepage, you should see the link to the event calendar that's right at the top of the page there.

That leads you and it has every event that we have available for folks to be able to see.

It has the detailed flyers and the dates, times, locations on um the event calendar as well.

In addition, you can Google or look up each recreation site itself, um, and go to their home page, and it has a list of all the classes and events that they'll be offering for the summer as well.

That's wonderful.

Thank you so much.

And I hope everybody takes advantage of the good stuff that you're offering.

Natalie, uh, can we proceed with public comment, please?

Thank you, Chair.

The public comment period for item four is now open, and we did receive one speaker slip from an individual here in the committee room.

Samantha, please approach the lectern.

Each speaker will have one minute to speak to item four.

Good afternoon.

My name is Samantha.

My name is Samantha Castranovo, and I'm a native of the city of San Diego.

I've had the opportunity to use many of the parks and recreation centers from the swimming pools to the indoor gyms to pick a ball, as well as the basketball courts, and many other things, and I'm very much hoping that you will find a way to keep all the rec centers open many more hours than our currently proposed in the 2027 proposed budget.

Um, and as a suggestion, maybe just to consider planning the seed, to look into the option of naming um community partners collaborating with the city for naming rights per each budget year, maybe just this is just adopt a recenter, something like that.

Thank you for that concluding statement.

This does conclude your time, and this will conclude in-person publication.

We will now move to the virtual queue.

I've started the five-minute timer.

We have three hands raised in the virtual queue, and as a reminder, each speaker will have one minute to speak to item four, phone number ending at 870.

Please press star six to unmute and begin.

Uh Joyce and Yata to that lovely person that just spoke in your room there.

Uh I'll adopt a rec center.

I wish I could, but those are beautiful words.

Uh so uh yay for the play outside uh program, come play outside program.

Yeah, you know, I I we could go on and on, we just love it so much.

We love it, love it, we love on it a lot.

So a couple of more serious things.

Um, and I do say yes to uh the budget and to the uh you know to the whole thing we're presenting here.

So uh the CRG, which are the uh community rec groups.

Um, how are we doing with those?

Because if I remember right, years ago.

I I how long ago it was.

We had some uh things come up which uh really needed to be uh brought to the surface and looked at and corrected.

And I I'm sure with a long time passing, those are all straightened out, but I just wondered if there is some really excellent monitoring.

Thank you.

This does conclude your time.

Sorry.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Tony.

Please unmute and begin.

Hello, good afternoon.

Hello, can you hear me?

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hey, sorry, thank you about uh uh sorry, thank you for that.

Uh well, uh, very few things that I get to get to say.

Uh I'm in agreement with the mayor on, and this is definitely one of them.

What an incredible program.

I have to tip my cat my hat to him.

Um and what what an incredible presentation as well.

Um it's a skill to be able to uh read and present the information in a way that doesn't uh make it uh feel like it's becoming boring or dragging on, and I was just very captivated by the presentation.

I had no idea that these pro that some of these programs existed.

Um I had seen the movies in the park, and I thought that was super cool.

I had no idea the deep sea uh fishing trips existed.

That's super cool.

These are life changing experiences.

I'd love to see more of these uh rec recreation centers funded to the maximum possible extent, as uh was proposed by uh uh the presentation and um uh yeah, fantastic work.

Thank thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our final speaker in the queue with their hand raised is Blair Beekman, please I'd be and begin.

Hi, Blair Beekman.

Hopefully my Zoom is working.

Um to keep up good community practices, as I was mentioning last week at committee.

Um there's a microphone uh where the when a person speaks in public that's shorting out and and it's it's cutting out a person's voice, and it doesn't sound very clear and fuzzy.

Uh good luck we can work on that.

It was there last week, even when we tried to make adjustments.

Uh good luck how you can work on it.

Um again with this item, good luck how you can be talking about uh come and play items.

Uh, that was a part of this item.

For me, you you had a big deal about the future of rec centers.

And rec centers is kind of ground zero for the future of biometric tech work in San Diego and senior centers as well.

Um we have to be learning how to have those conversations more openly, I feel.

Uh, you know, when we say sports utility lighting after the flood issue, it's we wanted you know, it was it was a time to be cautious.

We need to be more open and we need to be clear with each other about the term biometric tech, and good luck in our efforts we make towards that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Chair, this concludes public comment on item four.

Thank you so much.

And I'm now going to turn it over to committee members for questions, comments, and to entertain a motion.

And first speaker will be council member Foster.

Um, yes, thank you, Chair.

Um, and thank you for the presentation.

I will start.

I will um move the item staff's recommendation.

Um, but I guess I just just a quick question.

Is I'm looking at the recreation center fund budgets attachment A.

Um, it looks like we have some areas that have pretty high balances.

How do they can you can you kind of further explain why they have such why they're maintaining such a high balance?

Yes, thank you for that question.

Great question.

Yeah, you will see a handful of the sites that do have larger fund balances.

I did mention that's attributed to the uh amount of space they have available to program and uh or permit within the neighborhood.

They may have dozens of neighborhood parks that they're permitting athletics to on a regular basis or birthday parties that generate revenue into the recreation center fund.

Um a lot of the programs they're offering are cost recoverable and also have a small percentage that remain into the recreation center fund.

And these sites do have lean heavily on contract-based service programs, and so you're seeing that extra 15% on all those contracts remaining into the recreation center fund balances.

And if they're not expending those excess funds on additional equipment or regular enhanced maintenance projects, it does collect in there.

Sometimes we do have community recreation groups that are saving some of that funding to go towards a minor capital project.

It may go towards enhancing a playground or being able to finish a playground renovation or adding a shade structure at one of their local neighborhood parks, but primarily it is due to those contract services and those additional field spaces and room spaces they have available to permit.

Okay, thank you for that.

Um it makes sense.

I think um I'll fall back and have some conversations.

We had a few um uh I want to say issues and things that have come up around basketball, um, especially with with our Encanto and our ladies, our Lady Bulls team.

Um I know um Andy, the director of Park and Rec is working on um ensuring that we have some summer programming um in regards to um basketball um leagues and tournaments and things as we talk about you know north of the eight versus south of the eight.

Um I think we kind of ran into some unfortunate circumstances.

I know he's working to correct that, but it seems like we should be able to um have some funding and some things to to make sure that we are able to from an equity perspective make sure that our our um organization south have the same opportunities with basketball leagues, summer pro summer leagues and so forth as they are um doing their programming.

So with that again, um thank you for all the work that you do.

Um you know this was an important item when we developed the opportunity on fun and um just good to see that it is uh progressing um in um working, I guess I'll say so.

With that, um that concludes my comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Campillo.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our staff for presenting this for taking the time uh to put the information together for us uh in my district and communities like Lin Vista and Tiersanta and many others, the park and rec centers uh are really community hubs and they are used heavily every single day after school.

And I know our staff runs programs that help keep children out of trouble after school, stay active and healthy in our city parks, connect seniors, uh all sorts of things.

So I'm happy to see that the Come Play Outside program was heavily implemented in our district to provide the equitable access to recreation programs uh who for people who really need it.

And it's very well attended, I've seen it.

Uh so every year I get the opportunity to uh attend parks after dark uh at the Linda Vista Rec Center that this program helps fund.

So uh each year seeing those families and those children benefit, uh I'm reminded of your good work, and uh on behalf of my constituents uh who not many are in this committee room today, uh they truly appreciate uh the work you all put together.

So thank you on their behalf and on my own.

So thank you, Chair.

I will second.

Thank you so much.

So we have a motion by councilmember Foster, a second by Councilmember Campillo, and we will now take the vote using the voting screen.

Thank you.

And the motion passes 3-0 with Vice Chair Von Wilbert absent.

Thank you.

That concludes item number four, and it brings us to the end of today's agenda.

Thank you to members of the public and the staff for participation, and uh thank you, Samantha, for being here, and thank you for your suggestion.

And I will now adjourn the meeting of the community neighborhood services committee to our next regularly scheduled meeting, which will be Wednesday, June 24th, 2026 at 2 p.m.

We are adjourned.